I Wish I Could Believe

posted Jan 19, 2011, 2:49 PM by Sheri Perl

I Wish I Could Believe

I can’t tell you how many times people have said to me, “I
wish I could believe, I wish I had your faith.” It often surprises me to
realize that people see me as a woman of faith when I grew up with no real
faith at all. At age 18, I didn’t
know if I believed in God, I certainly didn’t believe in miracles and I never
thought much about spirits or what happens after we die. Thinking about death
scared me and if it wasn’t for the fact that I was desperately ill, I would not
have ventured into spirituality at all.

I grew up a Jersey Girl in the suburbs of Essex County in a
home that was devoid of spirituality and mysticism of any kind. By the time I
was a teenager in the mid- 1960’s I was convinced that there was “the real
world” in which I had my existence and that everything else was pure fantasy.
The fairy tales of my childhood were to be left behind and with that the idea
of miracles as well. I remember accepting this sad and colorless interpretation
of life and feeling as if a part of me had died, and yet, to my mind real was
real, and I knew the difference!

These beliefs were held firmly by both my family and myself,
and so when I was afflicted with Crohn’s Disease at the age of 16, we pursued
no other course of treatment outside of traditional medical science. It was
what we trusted. We placed all our hopes on my doctors to supply us with a
cure. Little did we know that from 1967 to 1969 my disease would grow in
severity while we pursued medical treatment to the exclusion of anything
else.

By the summer of 1969 I had descended into the depths of
hell, suffering more from this debilitating disease than I had ever conceived
possible. At the same time I contracted Hepatitis C from blood transfusions
administered during one of two emergency surgeries. By 1970 the first symptoms
of the Hepatitis C surfaced and eventually I was diagnosed with Chronic
Hepatitis. I was dumbfounded to comprehend that I had another disease with the
potential to become more severe over time. My doctors encouraged my parents to
give money to research because they believed that in the absence of a cure, I
would not live past another 10 years. This prognosis was made in 1971.

I had heard about Harry Edwards, a British spiritual healer,
in 1968. At the time I couldn’t believe what I had heard. It didn’t fit into my
concept of “the real world” and I saw no reason to consider it. I simply could
not imagine how some man in Britain could so “something” over there that would have
an effect on me who was all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. I just couldn’t
conceive of it.

I admit that the concept still sounded very far-fetched to
me in 1971, however something was significantly different about me by 1971.
Suffering had humbled me and shook my confidence. I was no longer the girl who
thought she knew so much about life and while I didn’t believe in spiritual
healing or miracles, I realized that I didn’t believe in a lot of the things
that had happened to me, but they had happened. All of a sudden it dawned on me
that just because I didn’t believe in something didn’t make it not so and that I
clearly had nothing to lose in trying. Shortly there after, I made contact with
the Harry Edwards Spiritual Healing Sanctuary in Guildford, Surrey, England and
was instructed to write a letter and describe the condition for which I sought
healing. It really sounded like a pipe dream to me yet I wrote my letter anyway,
and my father who was going to England on business hand-delivered it into the
hands of Mr. Harry Edwards.

Forty-eight hours after my father handed Mr. Edwards my
letter, I had so much energy I was flying! There was no doubt in my mind that
something was happening, because of the feeling of energy that everywhere
pervaded my body. For a young woman who had been sick for four years, this was
a new and wonderful feeling. I was not only energized physically but I was also
uplifted emotionally, as if imbued with a new, strong sense of optimism! Within
weeks my blood tests showed dramatic improvement. Over the next six-month period my physical health was
restored but the quest for understanding had just began.

The first thing I wanted to know was how did this “healing”
take place? I was still dumbfounded as to how Harry Edwards could have helped
me with us separated by the Atlantic Ocean!

Fortunately we live in a day and age where books and
recordings are readily available and so I began my spiritual studies by delving
into books written by Harry Edwards himself. I was surprised to learn that Mr.
Edwards only credited himself with a small part of the healing, that of being
the messenger. He credited the greater part of the healing to spirits, who he
referred to as “spirit doctors.” According to Harry, it was these spirits who were
responsible for carrying out the healing. This was shocking news to me, since I
wasn’t sure I believed in spirits, but I could not dismiss the experience of
energy that came to me from out of nowhere and turned my life around for the
better!

Harry explained that time and space, as we know them, do not
exist in the spirit realm which makes it possible for a spirit to be any where
in no time. This explained how the healing could have reached me
“trans-Atlantically.” Because my healing experience had demonstrated to me the
presence of unseen energy, I could now imagine that within this unseen energy
there could be a world of spirit. I could think of no other explanation for the
healing that had taken place in my body, nor did I have any reason to mistrust
this gentle man who had done more for me than all the k3cings horses and all
the kings men and we had some pretty top horses and men in our camp!

So herein lie the origins of my faith. Until this happened, I
had no faith. I was one of those people who didn’t believe and didn’t even wish
that she could. I prided myself on being a logical, reasoning person and I
thought people who believed in miracles were a little off. But I couldn’t deny
my own experience, both the feeling of the energy and the results that were
viewable in my physical body and blood tests! And so, I became a believer. I
wasn’t sure a believer of what, but I knew from that time on, there was more to
life than what I could perceive with my five senses.

As a result, I set out to learn everything I could about
those things that I could not see. I was hungry to understand how all of this worked. I started
out by reading about spiritual healing and mediums, those people who could
communicate with beings in that invisible world. I moved on to taking classes
with mediums and booking sessions with mediums on a regular bases and the more
I investigated, the more evidence I found to substantiate the continuation of
life after death.

To all those who say, “I wish I could believe” I say
INVESTIGATE. Don’t just sit back and wish. If you are mourning a loved one seek
connection with him or her through spirit. In the following pages I will share
with you the events and details that have convinced me that Dan exists and the
many means through which connection has been made.